Architecture’s Affective Imaginaries

Abstract

This article considers affect in historical and contemporary architectural practice. This takes shape through a consideration of a 2012–2015 historic preservation project involving one of the famed rock-hewn churches in Lalibela, Ethiopia, which sits in a complex of churches designated a world heritage site by UNESCO in 1978. Using theory, interviews, and speculative and projective diffractive drawings, we suggest how envisaging the affective unsettles “normal” architectural practice.

Keywords:

• affect
• architecture
• design
• historic preservation
• practice

Acknowledgements

We thank Reese Babcock, an intern at our design research practice, a.field, for work on the drawings in Figures 1, 2, and 3 in this article and the chapter on Lalibela’s rock-hewn churches in our book Situated Practices in Architecture and Politics.

Notes

1 See guidelines like The Architecture Student’s Handbook of Professional Practice, 15th ed., AIA (New York: Wiley, 2017); Sri Lankan Institute of Architects, Practice Manual Vol. 3: Office Manual and Guidelines for Project Practice (Columbo: Sri Lankan Institute of Architects, 2010).

2 Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009). Also see Brian Massumi, Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002); Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003); Sara Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010); Lauren Berlant, Cruel Optimism (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011).

3 See Akari Nakai Kidd, Affect, Architecture, and Practice: Towards a Disruptive Temporality of Practice (New York: Routledge, 2022); Lilian Chee, Architecture and Affect: Precarious Spaces (London: Routledge, 2023). Also see, for example, Elizabeth Grosz, Architecture from the Outside: Essays on Virtual and Real Space (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001); James Ash, “Architectures of Affect: Anticipating and Manipulating the Event in Processes of Videogame Design and Testing,” Environment and Planning Design D: Society and Space 28:4 (2010): 653–71; Karen Barad, “Posthumanist Performativity: Towards an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 28:3 (2003): 801–31; Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015).

4 UNESCO, “What is Intangible Cultural Heritage?” Undated, https://ich.unesco.org/en/what-is-intangible-heritage-00003. Also see, Tuuli Lähdesmäki, “Politics of Tangibility, Intangibility, and Place in the Making of a European Cultural Heritage in EU Heritage Policy,” International Journal of Heritage Studies 22:10 (2016): 766–80.

5 Stephen Battle, interview with Mah and Rivers, November 10, 2020. All Stephen Battle quotations and references come from this interview.

6 Fasil Giorghis, interview with Mah and Rivers, December 20, 2020. All Giorghis quotations and references come from this interview unless otherwise noted.

7 See Orlando Woods, “Sonic Spaces, Spiritual Bodies: The Affective Experience of the Roots Reggae Soundsystem,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 44:1 (2019): 181–94; Sukanya Sarbadhikary, “Religious Belief Through Drum-Sound: Bengal’s Devotional Dialectic of the Classical Goddess and Indigenous God,” Religions 13:8 (2022): 707–33.

8 Massumi, Parables, 180.

9 Massumi, Parables, 180.

10 Massumi, Parables, 186.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kai Wood Mah

Kai Wood Mah is a design historian, licensed architect with l’Ordre des architectes du Québec (OAQ), and professor at the McEwen School of Architecture at Laurentian University.

Patrick Lynn Rivers

Patrick Lynn Rivers is an interdisciplinary social scientist and professor.

Together, the authors codirect the design research practice a.field (www.afield.ca). In addition to their own individual projects, they are coauthors of the book Situated Practices in Architecture and Politics (Dalhousie Architectural Press, 2024) as well as chapters in noteworthy edited volumes and articles in international peer-reviewed journals like Borderlands, Interventions, Journal of Curriculum Studies, Space and Culture, and African Identities.